


And Taking Names

by luckywitch



Series: Happiness is a Warm Taser [1]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Banter, Burglary, Darcy/iPod, F/M, First Meetings, Flirting, Pre-Relationship, Swearing, UST, iPod, pop culture references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckywitch/pseuds/luckywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane and Darcy are being moved to New York to work at S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s a whirlwind of a summer and Darcy doesn’t even have her iPod back, but not for lack of trying.</p><p>It’s after a month of working at S.H.I.E.L.D. that she puts into action Operation: Fight for Your Right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Taking Names

**Author's Note:**

> If they were mine, Darcy would be in the Avengers. This may become a series, because I have a lot of plot bunnies in this verse.
> 
> If you see anything wrong with this (spelling, grammar, etc) please let me know and I'll fix it immediately! I don't have a beta, and I am looking for one. Enjoy! :)

Here’s the thing, Darcy’s actually a pretty kick ass lab assistant. Ok, maybe she doesn’t know what Jane’s research deals with, but statistically speaking how many people do? She’s not positive, but she knows she’s in the majority, for sure. And ok, she plays music while working (inputting data is really boring) and hogs the coffee pot and may complain a bit too loudly about being stuck in the middle of nowhere and how Del Taco is way too far to her liking, but she doesn’t mean it in a spiteful way, it’s just a way to let out some steam like when Jane goes on the roof.

Jane is brilliant, but not the most organized person, unless she writes it down in her journal. It’s a key, cipher, and index all rolled into one. Unfortunately, this doesn’t extend to her computer habits, where everything just gets randomly saved on to the desktop until it looks like it is covered in confetti, and not the fun kind either, but the kind that get stuck in your hair and on your face and don’t know it. Darcy wrestles it into submission and creates an awesome database on top of that to organize all the lab assistant-y things Jane has her do like look up articles and scan them.

She and Erik, when he is in town, are the only ones allowed to insert new information into it, since Jane manages to always screw something up, getting too caught up in the research, but it’s ok. Jane can search things on it pretty well, and Darcy is working on trying to make it more user—Jane—friendly when she isn’t creating a new playlist or generating another graph.

When S.H.I.E.L.D. comes and takes all their equipment away, it’s a pretty devastating blow. Yea, all of Jane’s hard work and Darcy’s awesome database is gone in a “I fought the law and the law won” kind of way; which would be a perfect song to listen to right now if they didn’t also take her damn iPod as well.

  
Her iPod is a true thing of beauty, her life’s work, her magnum opus, something that they’ll put in a museum once she is the leader of a small country. There was a playlist for every occasion and 30 new songs that have only been listened to once.

She’s not even allowed to properly grieve and get pissed over its departure, because a robot decides to destroy the town, her life is in danger, Thor magically changes costumes as if he were Sailor Moon and is revealed to be—not the princess of the moon—but a Norse god that can fly!

  
Then he disappears, going back to who the hell knows where, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is interested and letting Jane continue her research again. Thor comes back thanks to the magic of science or the science of magic, and Jane and Darcy are being moved to New York to work at S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s a whirlwind of a summer and Darcy doesn’t even have her iPod back, but not for lack of trying.

* * *

It’s after a month of working at S.H.I.E.L.D. that she puts into action Operation: Fight for Your Right.

* * *

When Jane gets transferred to S.H.I.E.L.D. there are a lot more qualified people to help her out and actually understand what an “Einstein-Rosen bridge” is, people who don’t think that Mr. and Mrs. Einstein-Rosen donated a lot of money to have a bridge named after them, which is totally a valid response. It feels like it happens all the time at college with a new naming ceremony every other month. But with Jane and her team—which Darcy mentally dubs ‘The Physettes” even if some of them are dudes—it frees Darcy’s time up considerably and S.H.I.E.L.D. gives her a job as some interoffice flunky, which is better than what it sounds.

She uses her organizational skills for good, has already dominated everybody else in the office with her Google-fu, and knows all of Jane’s hiding spots. Plus, she already has a working relationship with Thor, and it seems like most of the employees of S.H.I.E.L.D. like to give him and any of the rest of the Avengers a wide berth. She hasn’t had the time, or rather, the Avengers have been really busy, and so they all haven’t met each other yet, but she sure she’s supposed to be doing interoffice-y flunky stuff for them too.

It’s by the third week that she learns where the storage facilities are located that contain all the confiscated items, and a week later she knows how to get in and the best days to enter and not run into anyone. It’s not like she hasn’t tried to get Coulson to give her back her iPod, but it always ends up being put off due to other situations and priorities, and yea, Darcy guesses the fate of America is more important than her iPod, but when is America going to do her a favor and stop being such a nice target for crazies that want to keep attacking it? Darcy decides to get her iPod back herself. It can’t be that hard.

On the day of Operation: Fight for Your Right, Darcy wears her preplanned spy outfit to work which just consists of things she wears normally but this time with black high-heeled ankle boots that can do more damage than they look and a flowy green blouse, that is excellent for concealing her taser and lets her show off some primetime cleavage when she unties the bow on the neckline, providing ample distraction, in case she needs it. Who said marathoning James Bond movies wouldn’t teach you anything?

Her cover story for why she is dressed nice is that she’s going to an art show after work, because no one is going to question it because it’s New York and a new art show that’s going to revolutionize the art world happens every minute in this city and most likely, no one is going to care. It’s Monday, and even though it’s the law that Monday’s suck, they manage to be even worse at S.H.I.E.L.D. since it mainly involves cleaning up and paperwork from whatever mayhem happened on the weekend. Darcy can, at most, appreciate that bad guys are consistent in their crazy and she knows to avoid places where there will be a lot of people or anyone important on the weekend.

It’s after six, and most employees are on their way home except for half the scientists and the night duty division of S.H.I.E.L.D. that monitor and scan for any dangerous activity and occasionally do sweeps of the building. It wouldn’t be bad if Darcy was caught and acted like she was supposed to be down there, but if security were to check the I.D. she was using, well, then there may be trouble, because she’s borrowing someone else’s. Who leaves their I.D. in the bathroom? Darcy is going to take full advantage of that security level 8 clearance and get her ass in that locker.

It’s as she is pressing the button B6 in the elevator that it sinks in that Darcy is breaking into a top-secret government facility to retrieve her iPod. She has a fleeting thought of, ‘I may have a mental problem.’ Before the notion is replaced with excitement and breaking into a top-secret government facility goodies locker!

Darcy has a layout of the floor in her bag that contains various other helpful items like fake paperwork and some real paperwork and is rummaging around in it, when she hears the elevator chime and steps out; she finds the slightly crumpled map and looks up.

Basement level 6 is huge. When there is all underground to build a floor, well, it can be made the size of a Super Wal-Mart. Schematic wise, the place is pretty simple. There is one main hallway in the middle of the room that all the others branch off of. The first branch takes a right and leads past a small armory that is heavily locked, one of the specialized gyms, and the smaller shooting ranges. The storeroom with all of the commandeered equipment is down a passage to the left a few feet further than the first hallway. All the way straight down and to the right are the bigger shooting ranges and a field for capture the flag or realistic simulations of scenarios in the field training.

The elevator spits Darcy out into the main hallway. It’s silent down there, but S.H.I.E.L.D. has some amazing sound proofing, since she’s heard stories from Jane about explosions going on in Research and Development and Darcy’s never heard it on the upper floors. It’s a quick little walk to corridor on the left and not even a minute later is she in front of the door.

She’s swipes the borrowed I.D. and prays to Thor that this will work, and that he can’t actually hear her, although the wish granting powers would be appreciated. When the computerized card scanner pops up and flashes clear, Darcy lets out a quiet, “Yesss!” Darcy can’t help to take a compulsory look behind her like all guilty people and finds someone behind her.

She jumps back and gasps, “Fuuuuuuu,” just barely cutting it off before she finishes the word.

“What the hell?” she barks out, only to realize that maybe snapping questions at some random S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who looks physically dangerous, if not for the smirk that’s begging to be tasered, he just doesn’t know it yet.

“Oh, seeing if you needed any help. You looked confused and I’m always happy to lend a helping hand,” he says bullshitting like it’s his job. And it probably is.

Darcy needs little Mr. Sunshine to go away fast and pulls out the big guns. “Thank you, Agent…” pausing to read his nametag, “Barton, but I have the situation under control here.” His name sounds familiar but she can’t quite recall why and covers it up with a fake smile. “Now, don’t you have some paperwork to do? Because if you don’t, I’m sure I could find you some,” she finishes, reaching into her bag for her phone, ready to check some emails and send Jane a text to make it look like she’s working.

Thankfully Agent Barton takes the bait, eyes going wide and panicked for a second before returning to normal, flashing her a grin before he responds, “Now, that won’t be necessary, Agent… I’ll see you around.” He winks has he turns around and swaggers off.

Darcy mutters, “Ass,” under her breath as she reswipes her I.D. and opens the door, grateful that the paper plan worked.

It’s funny that in S.H.I.E.L.D., an agency that fights monsters, terrorists, and other scary things on an almost daily basis, that everyone here shies away from paperwork. Gunfights? Yes. Form 8A-12B? No. He, who controls the paperwork, controls the power.

When she walks inside the lights automatically turn on and the place looks like a stereotypical warehouse filled with metal shelving and brown cardboard boxes, just larger—like a football field or two larger. Of course those boxes probably have more interesting things in them besides old Apple computers and company newsletters from the past twenty years. Still, Darcy wouldn’t put it past S.H.I.E.L.D. that she would be able to find the Ark of the Covenant down here. There doesn’t seem to be an apparent filing system that Darcy can make out, so she dives right into an aisle a bit left of center to see if that will make it any clearer how things are organized.

Ten minutes later and she gets a clue that she’s searching items from around 1995, which sure, is further away from the present day than what she’d like but it’s better than finding things from the ‘60s. Darcy tries her luck five rows down to the left again to see if she’s going chronologically ascending or descending in the stacks. This time the row she enters has miscellanea from 1997 and seeing as she’s on the right track, walks all way to the end or the rows to work her way back towards the center.

It’s boring, eerily silent, and dusty but Darcy knew getting her iPod back was going to take some work. Still, none of the boxes or equipment sitting out look like they’re from Jane’s labs and it’s all about tediously going through some research papers hoping to catch a glimpse of a date to figure out how far ahead she is. Darcy reminds herself that it will all be worth it once she has her iPod again, but it would be easier searching for the damn thing if she had music to distract her.

She knows she’s close when she in the boxes from this year, that are only about a month ahead of when of all their things got packed up, stolen by the government. Even though she’s a month away from their boxes, there are still, at least, 100 more on this aisle to go through before the next aisle. She sighs and turns around to get back to combing the warehouse.

Somehow a bit of dust has irritated her nose and damn does Darcy need to sneeze, but it’s not coming and it’s that uncomfortable, itchy feeling of just waiting. She shifts to look into the light and finally she sneezes. It’s a big one that makes her eyes shut tight and all the air leave her lungs, but she feels an immediate relief until her eyes open again and the guy from earlier is standing in front of her, just having been sneezed on.

“Oh shit,” exclaims Darcy unable to stop herself from cussing, “Where the hell did you come from?”

The agent is too busy giving himself a look over and making a slightly disgusted face, which is when she remembers that she sneezed on him—embarrassed that she spit her germs all over him and he snuck up on her, twice—says, “Sorry about the sneeze.” Thankfully her sneeze was aiming down and not up.

“Gesundheit,” he says while wiping his hands on his shirt, leaning against the metal frames of the shelves.

He sidesteps her earlier question and states, "So I never caught your name earlier.”

"That's because I never gave it,” Darcy doesn’t remember his name and has to read his uniform before she responds, “Agent Barton.” She doesn’t know how to get rid of him, but the first thought is to ignore him, which while it doesn’t sound like the best plan; it’s the only one she has right now.

Moving over a shelf, she starts rummaging through boxes again, feeling his silent stare on her back. She manages two minutes of ignoring him until she cracks, "You're not going to leave until I give in, aren't you?”

"Nope,” he discloses not in the least bit repentant.

"Fine,” she sighs out, “It's Lewis,” glaring at him, mentally shooing him out the door. Of course, her telekinesis doesn’t work.

Agent Barton lets out a slow grin, replying, "Nice to meet you...Agent Lewis.”

"Yea, it's a real pleasure,” she responds caustically, but Darcy had been going on about how bored she was. It was definitely a ‘be careful what you wish for and all that jazz’ kind of situation.

His questions breaks into her thoughts, “What’s got you searching down here after hours?”

"It's classified.” She declares in a ‘We’re done with the topic’ tone.

Barton doesn’t pick up on it at all, and he if does, just barrels over it. "It’s that much of a secret that you have to do it after hours?”

"Get the man a prize he knows what classified means,” she says while rolling her eyes. Darcy misses when the agent winces for a moment due to her response.

"You sure you don't need any help? I've got a good eye. Get expert word searches finished in a minute,” he states, smirking.

"When I'm trying to find Where's Waldo I'll know who to call,” brushing him off.

"Ghostbusters?”

"Are you sure S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't hire you for your comedic skills? ‘Cause you really got something there,” she retorts sarcastically. Darcy’s not as bored as she was and is having fun quipping with Agent Barton, even if there is an undercurrent of ‘Oh shit, I hope he doesn’t catch me and turn me in’ running along as well.

"Thanks doll, nice to know I'm appreciated,” he counters, casually winking to emphasize his point.

Darcy gives him an unimpressed stare. It just happens that her stare is so mighty that she takes in the rest of his physique too, which is not limited to the agent’s extremely appealing biceps and the whole arm area in general. Darcy bets herself that he has a six pack underneath the uniform.

Barton looks like he knows exactly what she’s thinking about and smirks. "It's obviously something recent and not large since you’re looking in the boxes. Want to at least give me a date? I had to put away some of these boxes so I know the damn cataloging system.”

"I didn't really think there was one, no Dewey decimal code. Y'know?” she replies, gesturing to the boxes because she’s spent the past hour or so going through them at random trying to find some sort of code.

"Yea, it's shit,” he admits shrugging, “But I don't really wanna be the one that has to reorganize it.”

"No kidding,” Darcy responds, trying to figure out if she should tell him or not and then goes for it, “Uhm, it's from 4 months ago...”

Barton quiets for a second, doing some mental math, before blurting out, "You mean around the time of the Thor incident?”

"Uhm yea...” Darcy feels increasingly distressed about telling the agent the truth. ‘I hope this works out and I don’t get caught and go to the S.H.I.E.L.D. prison for the rest of my days,’ she thinks.

"Those boxes are over here,” he leads, walking down the aisle, going a row over and points two shelves up.

Darcy reaches up and on her tip toes she is able to reach the first box. She open and goes through it like a kid opening their presents on Christmas. Not finding her iPod in that one, she goes for the second one when she catches Agent Barton’s bemused gaze.

She fumbles for a lie and comes up with, "Dr. Foster didn't get all of her equipment returned.” Then continues to pillage the box of all its contents and reaches for the third container.

“Thought you said it was classified,” he questions, a cocky smile on his lips.

‘There’s probably a reason why I’m not a secret agent, and this is why’ she thinks, while scrounging up a plausible excuse.

“It is. But it’s the device itself that is classified, not the surrounding details,” and waves her hand as if the details were merely a trifle.

Agent Barton doesn’t look so easily convinced but he lets it slide, so Darcy goes back to searching the boxes.

It’s in fourth box that she sees a flash of orange and her breath catches. She isn’t able to see the agent sharpen his attention on her, as she claws through shifted paperwork, and damn is it surprisingly heavy. Darcy’s fingertips brush lightly against the familiar fabric of her iPod cover and she can barely believe she’s going to have it in her hands in less than a minute, after a whole month away. Images float through her mind of herself cooing at the device asking if it missed her and letting it know that she was never going to let the big bad government take it away again.

She has it in her grasp and is pulling it out of the paperwork avalanche when her eyes rests on his feet and she sees the agent looking down on her with a swaggering grin.

“I’m going to need you to avert your eyes Agent Barton. Stat,” she declares in her most authoritative voice.

Barton looks like he is about to argue, when Darcy reminds him about how she wasn’t kidding with the paperwork, and he plays along and looks away, not without catching a glimpse of the classified item.

Darcy has no idea and shoves it into her bag, not actually believing that Operation: Fight for Your Right was a success. She wants to celebrate, but she can wait until she’s out of the building and not in front of a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, that she just happens to not want to embarrass herself in front of.

Darcy packs up all the boxes and manages to slide them on the shelf, while the agent watches with an amused expression and offering no help whatsoever. She is not able to keep herself from mouthing, “Ass” but is proud of herself for not actually vocalizing the word. He’s not frowning or offering to help, so she thinks he didn’t see her, but it’s as if his eyes took on an even more entertained glint—that Darcy may be conjuring out of thin air—so he might have seen her.

When she’s finished, she turns to the agent and asks, “Ready?” It’s not like Darcy thinks he was in here to do anything but annoy and spy on her, and even if he did have things to do he probably completed them before he went all stealthy on her.

Agent Barton nods his head and grins, leading the way. Darcy promises herself that she is going to taze that smirk off him, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

She quickens her pace to catch up with the agent. Not that the view is bad two steps behind Agent Barton, not bad indeed. It would not be a burden to see that man naked or in briefs, and she has to try and stop the mental images before they come flooding in. She doesn’t like the feeling of following like a lost puppy.

“Well,” she starts when she catches up to him, not quite sure what to say to the man that did end helping her and saved her, at least, an hour of work, “I don’t think that good eye of yours really came into play today.”

“What?” he exclaims, a bit affronted, “I’m the one that located the actual boxes.”

“Which I would have found eventually, you saved me ten minutes of work, tops.” Darcy may be reverting to elementary school behavior and pulling on his figurative pigtails, but teasing and joking is more fun than being super serious agent.

“It would have been much longer than that. You would have been in here until tomorrow morning,” he comes back with, holding the door to the hallway open for her.  
Darcy exits, ready to counter his claim, when she hears other people talking, she freezes up momentarily, and then tries to play it cool, trying to catch a glimpse of the people speaking without them seeing her.

She manages to respond with a lame, “Whatever.” Her voice not as loud as it once was and trying to concentrate on figuring out who is out there, without it looking like she’s trying to figure who they are.

Agent Barton sees completely through her and says, “Oh, that’s just security doing their sweeps.”

Darcy would like to think she kept completely calm, cool, and collected but in actuality her eyes widen, her heart starts beating a little faster, and her jaw drops a tad. She knew that security might come along, but the reason why she picked today was the fact that it was supposed to be empty and she was going to keep her head down. Now, one person has seen her, and does she want to risk a couple more people being able to identify her?

She opens her mouth to tell him that she forgot something in storage, when Barton grabs her wrist, pulls her down the hallway a few steps and covers her body with his own in the corner. She wants to ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing, when she hears the voices get louder and footsteps getting closer.

He leans in and whispers, “Shh,” in her ear.

His breath on her earlobe gives her goose bumps and makes her aware of how close he is. His body is warm and firm against hers. It’s a good fit, bodies aligning just right, when she’s in heels. Her heart beats faster and Darcy tries to keep her breath even.

She attempts to look over his shoulder to see what’s going on, but can’t see anything and ends up in the perfect place to catch the scent of wood, sweat, and some fragrance—soap, maybe?—something clean, sturdy, and manly.

‘What an ass,’ she thinks. ‘But, he did end up helping me find my iPod and is kind of amusing.’ All of that good will goes to hell, when she shifts and feel s something hard and rigid dig into her hip.

His pulls his head back and his eyes are actually twinkling with mirth when he looks into Darcy’s eyes and asks, “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

“Actually, it’s a taser.”

The agent goggles for a second, before he throws back his head and laughs. “Of course it is, I guess I’m lucky it’s not paperwork,” he says, stepping back, “All clear.”

Darcy can’t even stop herself when her mouth says, “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you, Agent Barton?”

Agent Barton smiles and replies, “Go ahead, make my day, Agent Lewis.”

An amused laugh escapes her lips and in no time at all she’s at the elevator. It’s one of the few times that the elevator is there when you press the button for it, so she wordlessly steps in, presses her floor, and as the doors start to close, she stops them with her hand and utters out, “Uhm…well, thanks for the help. Cool.”

Agent Barton gives her a mock salute and saunters off, probably to go annoy someone else.

Darcy lets her hand fall and reaches for her iPod as the door shut. Grabbing the headphones, she puts them on and scrolls to her William Wallace playlist, which is filled with songs about standing up to “the man” but not as serious as any of the playlists labeled “Fuck the…”

As she exits out the S.H.I.E.L.D. building with no further complications and walks back the apartment, she thinks everything is perfect now.

* * *

Until three days later when she officially meets the Avengers and find out that the smug bastard; no, not Tony Stark; but Agent Clint Barton is part of the team as he shoots her an entertained smirk.

Darcy’s only thought is, ‘Ass.’


End file.
